sábado, 12 de septiembre de 2009

The Big Bird Cage

Oh boy, another women in prison film. This one is actually more interesting than most, and was directed by master exploitation director Jack Hill. A sequel (in name only) to The Big Doll House, our story deals with high-society slut Terry (Anitra Ford, of Invasion Of The Bee Girls) who gets herself arrested after being involved with a group of terrorists, played by exploitation superstars Sid Haig and Pam Grier. In prison, she befriends the others as she’s is forced to work and fight for survival, and obligated to work in a contraption known as “The Bird Cage”. After Terry gets severely punished for trying to escape, Blossom (Pam Grier) joins the prison as an undercover agent of the revolutionary group, and soon the seeds are sown for the great escape that will end in a great action climax full of fire and destruction.What differentiates this movie from your typical WIP film is the humor. This movie is hilarious, and is constantly funny, almost like a parody of the WIP genre, which by then was already well-established. A lot of the humor comes from Sid Haig, who’s a master actor who gets into the prison by seducing one of the guards. Did I mention that most of the prison guards are exclusively gay? Yes they are. This particular guard is played by Filipino bad boy Vic Diaz, who plays a villain in almost every exploitation movie from the Philippines (including the previously reviewed Black Mama White Mama and The Deathshead Virgin). So yes, this is not as strong as your typical WIP film, although it does have one violent scene, where Anitra Ford almost gets gang-raped, and even that ends in a punch line. There’s also a lot of t&a from the cast. We get such beauties as Anitra Ford, Candice Roman (Unholy Rollers), and the Amazonian lesbian Karen McKevic, who smears chicken fat on herself to sneak past the guards just to rape a black chick, in one particularly ridiculous sequence. Still, this movie is awesome just on how ridiculous, and un-PC it is. It’s one of the most interesting and original of the WIP films, and is highly recommended.Now here’s a picture of Sid Haig and Vic Diaz looking longingly into each other’s eyes.